Amanda Foreman Quotes
For centuries, divorce in the West was a male tool of control—a legislative chastity belt designed to ensure that a wife had one master, while the husband could enjoy many mistresses.
Amanda Foreman, Historian & Writer, “Valentine’s Revenge”, Smithsonian, February 2004
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This type of religious sexism is not unique to Islam. Fundamentalist Christians place women in a secondary role as do fundamentalist orthodox Jews although both allow a man to take only one wife. The Islamic scripture tells us that the Prophet allowed multiple wives only if the man had the resources to care for the wives and all the children. 4 is the maximum.
Although she was very outspoken about the plight of women in society, she was very disapproving of women insisting upon rights. See {585321}.
At the time, in many states married women could not control their own inheritance, could not sign a contract, owned no part of a family business that a women might have founded and worked in her entire life, could not be an executor of a will—even if it were her husband’s.
At the time the law in the United States gave a husband control of all property of the wife including any money she might earn. In this sense the English Christian legal tradition was far less fair and modern than even Islam which guaranteed some property and inheritance rights to women.
This technique she describes is consistent with Sharia—Islamic Law. It however is used by very few women who are sophisticated and courageous enough to do so.
In Egypt a man may unilaterally divorce a wife by declaration and file a signed paper with the authorities. A woman, in contrast, must petition the court, have a hearing, and may be granted a divorce if the court thinks she deserves it under Islamic law. However, the courts are extremely crowded and corrupt. A woman may have to wait two years for a hearing, and since the husband usually has the control of the financial assets, the husbands sometimes bribe the judges to get the verdict they want.
Some change took place, mostly among educated in the cities. There has been little change otherwise since his death.
Amanda Lucy Foreman (born 1968) is a British/American biographer and historian. Her books include Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, A World on Fire, and The World Made by Women. She also wrote and starred in a four-part documentary regarding the role of women in society, entitled The Ascent of Woman. Currently, she is a columnist for The Wall Street Journal bi-weekly 'Historically Speaking' and an Honorary Research Senior Fellow in the History Department at the University of Liverpool.
